“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember.”

Top officials have resigned at the State Department before the Senate has confirmed former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State. The Washington Postreported:

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, [undersecretary for management Patrick] Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

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“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

The State Department also lost Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr, who retired on January 20, and director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations Lydia Muniz.

Other senior officials in bureaus across the country have left their posts, but these resignations provide a bigger blow to the department “because those offices need to be led by people who know the department and have experience running its complicated bureaucracies.”

No one knows for sure if Kennedy left on his own or if someone pushed him out. He had taken on the responsibility to help the transition to the Trump administration. Him leaving surprised many in the department. One officials told the Post that all of those people “had previously submitted their letters of resignation, as was required for all positions that are appointed by the president and that require confirmation by the Senate, known as PAS positions.”

But Ambassador Richard Boucher, a former State Department spokesman under Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, said that usually the old team stays put to help the new team transition smoothly. He cannot believe these people left such important positions unmanned:

The officials who manage the building and thousands of overseas diplomatic posts are charged with taking care of Americans overseas and protecting U.S. diplomats risking their lives abroad. The career foreign service officers are crucial to those functions as well as to implementing the new president’s agenda, whatever it may be, Boucher said.

“You don’t run foreign policy by making statements, you run it with thousands of people working to implement programs every day,” Boucher said. “To undercut that is to undercut the institution.”

Don’t forget that Patrick Kennedy remains tangled up in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal.

Back in October, the FBI released documents that showed Kennedy attempted to influence the FBI over some emails. He actually proposed a “quid pro quo” to the department to change the classification of an email. Kennedy offered the FBI “additional slots for the bureau overseas.” This means the department would have received permission “to place more Agents in countries they are presently forbidden.”

I seem to recall (sorry, I don’t have a link) reading a couple months ago that a number of Obama era officials were “burrowing in” – that is, they were converting to regular employees in order to avoid being automatically canned as appointees when the new administration came in. I also think I recall that Patrick Kennedy was one of those.

If my recollection is at all correct (even money on that!), then no, this is not a case of people resigning for the convenience of the new president and finding that they are not to be reappointed. It’s sour grapes, pure and simple.

I don’t know what the process is for converting to a regular employee is at State, but I imagine it’s not automatic. You certainly can’t stay on as an undersecretary. You’re going to have to take a big demotion and find an opening below the political appointee level.

And Patrick Kennedy was not trying to to “burrow in.” He was helping with the transition, and according to the WaPo he was trying to keep the same job he’s been in for the past 9 years.

That’s exactly what Mike Lee, who covers the State Dept. for the AP said.

These are political appointees. For instance, undersecretary for management Patrick Kennedy, appointed by George Bush in 2007, left the State Dept. unexpectedly because he didn’t expect his resignation would be accepted. Normally offering one’s resignation is just a formality. Little did he and his minions know Trump didn’t want them to stay on.

“‘It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,’ said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry.”

The best thing that can happen for the country gets an institutional lobotomy so the whole place suffers institutional memory loss. The DoS has been screwing up for longer than I’ve been alive, and yet they keep trying to do the same things over and over again, but expecting different results.

Next step: get rid of anyone who thinks armistice lines are borders, advocates for a two state solution, and still believes in the insanity known as the Arab-Isreali peace process.

There’s actually a great deal of doubt as to whether these departures were actually “voluntary”. Just for background, Patrick Kennedy was the State Dep’t official who repeatedly tried to de-classify the classified info found in Hillary’s e-mails ex post facto; he was one of her most loyal disciples in the state dep’t.

Patrick Kennedy and his team were the ones who just resigned. If it was voluntary, fine – if it wasn’t voluntary, even better. It would mean that even in government, actions are beginning to have consequences.

Are they leaving because any evidence of wrong doing in their private email for, example would be untouchable? Are they leaving the department or just being reassigned? Did Trump not rehire them? So many questions.

those offices need to be led by people who know the department and have experience running its complicated bureaucracies

Any department with operations too byzantine to understand is a department to confused to be useful.

The departments I’d expect to be thoroughly riddled with uselessness incarnate are State and Justice. I figured the malefactors would be difficult to root out. But if some leave under their own power, so much the better.

I expect these four have been overheating the paper shredders this past week.

“Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

I was surprised that some one would actually say this. All of those positions could be filled from the private sector or from other parts of the government.

About the only thing that could need some institutional knowledge would be related to protocol. But, I would say that Obama made some mistakes – remember the iPod with all of his speeches given to Queen Elizabeth, all of his bowing to people and of course, Hillary’s reset button with the wrong Russian words.

We have just ended 8 years with Hillary Clinton and John Kerry as SecState. To survive that, what kind of people would these senior administrators have to be? Even if they did not assist the last 2 SecStates to commit actions which are, at best, embarrassing, and, at worst, criminal, it is almost impossible for them not to have had knowledge that such actions were occurring. So, they were going anyway. And, possibly not in a pleasant way. However, in the spirit of the Obama administration, they chose to leave in such a way as to cause the most problem for the incoming administration. It will be interesting to see what documents they took with them.

The state department has had it’s own agenda for decades. Their favorite game is “undermine the republican President”. This isn’t a tragedy, it’s the best damned thing that could possibly happen for the new Secretary of State.

“…CNN now reports that the Trump administration told undersecretary for management Patrick Kennedy, Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Joyce Anne Barr, and director of the Office of Foreign Missions Gentry Smith to take a hike. State Department assistant secretary for Europe Victoria Nuland was also shown the door. They submitted their letters of resignation as “per tradition at the beginning of a new administration,” said CNN, and the White House gave the okay. A senior State Department official stated, “There is just not any attempt here to dis the President. People are not quitting and running away in disgust. This is the White House cleaning house.”

So why did the media run with the original headline?

Because it made it appear that chaos was running rampant throughout the administration. Posts abandoned! A world in flames! What if Khruschev decided to place nuclear missiles in Cuba at this very moment and there was NO ONE AT THE HELM?!

In reality, it’s great to see hacks like Kennedy go. Kennedy was a flack for Hillary Clinton…”